Wednesday, June 1, 2016

My First Full Day in London Town – cineTREK #2

Saturday May 28, 2016My First Full Day in London Town – cineTREK #2

Heading into the film Love and Friendship on the warm Friday evening I was having mixed feelings while waiting for the Jane Austen adaptation to fill the screen. Through my years and years of experience I have come to the conclusion that period films can either be one of two polar extremes: extremely tacky or totally dreamy. To my honest surprise it was the latter, and I had an absolutely wonderful time hearing even more about it from the director himself Whit Stillman. A few of the aspects of the film that he discussed resonated closely with me. Particularly, when Stillman was posed the question, “how were you able to adjust this type of film to attract younger audiences?” He responded quickly and confidently, “If I tell the story correctly all audiences including younger people will be attracted and able to connect and appreciate this film.” This statement neatly wrapped up my feelings about the film and warmed my heart to think about the timelessness of good stories such as Love and Friendship. The second piece of the film I appreciated hearing Stillman discuss was his characters and their development on screen, their inspiration, and also their organic inception. He admitted that he could not take complete credit for the character creation when specifically discussing the ‘Sir James Martin’ character stating simply, “I just had to let him happen”. The character organically grew to be more and more significant in the film out of necessity and developed into one of the key parts of the film, and my personal favorite. Overall, I was completely smitten at the end of the evening. I felt totally stoked after watching a satisfying film, and hearing Whit Stillman explain his film, his process, and his passion.